Eight Vaccines on Paper but No Vaccination

Talk of coronavirus vaccines and Iran’s vaccination have been increasing over the past two days in the country. On January 26, at a meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced that the government’s health authorities had approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and planned to both import and produce it in Iran.

Iranian authorities had previously said it would wait for international health organizations to approve the Russian vaccine before buying it – but this approval has yet to come.

Officials have also said Iran is developing three vaccines domestically and is procuring at least five vaccines from outside the country. But to date not one Iranian has been vaccinated outside clinical trials.

No timetable for vaccinations has yet been given – though officials are pining for inoculations to begin even on a small scale on the February 10 anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Health minister Saeed Namaki, in announcing the five foreign sources of vaccine, said they were being sourced from a European supplier, China, Russia and two Indian manufacturers. He added that these separate vaccines would be sourced through the COVAX initiative of the World Health Organization, which aims to provide more equitable global access to coronavirus vaccines.

Abdolnaser Hemmati, governor of Iran’s Central Bank, had earlier said that Iran had paid a deposit to the World Health Organization to buy 16.8 million doses of vaccine from COVAX.

Namaki also reported that Iran had started a joint venture with a company in Asia to develop a vaccine. Iran is already working with Cuba to conduct phase 3 clinical trials of a Cuban vaccine in Iran and the agreement between the two countries calls for mass production in Iran after successful trials.

Another domestic vaccine is Barekat-CovIran, which is being developed by the Executive Headquarters of Imam's Directive, an organization directly controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In recent days, Mohammad Mokhber, president of the organization, has repeatedly promised that this vaccine, currently in phase 1 of clinical trials, would go into mass production by May. In his latest statements on January 27, he said that in the next couple of weeks “we will reach a monthly production of between 1.5 to three million doses” and by May and June “we will have a monthly production of between 12 to 14 million doses.” According to Mokhber, phase 1 of the clinical trial of the CovIran vaccine will be completed by February 18.

The third Iranian vaccine is under development by Iran’s Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute.

Iranian officials are therefore pursuing eight coronavirus vaccines – none of which are yet available for use.

In other news, Saeed Namaki said the seventh case of the more contagious coronavirus variant that was first detected in the United Kingdom has now been identified in Iran. Namaki said the patient had flown to Iran from the Netherlands and is now in a southern province.

Also, Iran’s beach football training camp has been halted due to coronavirus concerns. The Iranian Football Federation chose to suspend training after it was confirmed that several players had been infected with coronavirus.

Provinces Round-up

Compliance with health protocols in Tehran has fallen from 81 to 39 percent, Namaki also said, warning that this “sounds alarm bells” for a fourth wave of coronavirus in the capital.

Namaki also called the rate of Covid-19 fatalities in three northern provinces, especially in Mazandaran, where more than 1,100 are hospitalized, “unacceptable.” He also reported a slight increase in cases in some southern provinces such as Hormozgan, partly as a result of the increase in the number of travelers who visit these areas to escape the cold of the winter in other provinces.

Hossein Khosh-Eghbal, deputy governor of Kermanshah, said there are 37,500 people in the province who suffer from underlying diseases, and that they are more vulnerable to Covid-19. “Unfortunately, besides suffering from various diseases, these people have many other problems,” he said. “Under the current conditions, economic problems have put this segment of society under more pressure than others and, unfortunately, the rate of coronavirus fatalities among them is higher. They have less immunity against coronavirus than others and we must act to provide them with necessary safeguards and preventive measures.”

In the span of a month, meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases has doubled in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, reported Dr. Farhad Abolnejadian, president of Ahvaz Jondishapur University of Medical Sciences. “It is a fantasy if we believe that coronavirus is over and done with,” he warned. “The considerable increase in activity and traveling [to the province] and the noticeable decline in compliance with health protocols have led to a doubling of the number of coronavirus patients in recent months.”

With the hospitalization of 30 new Covid-19 patients in Alborz, the total number of hospitalizations in this province has reached 258 people, reported Dr. Mohammad Fathi, president of Alborz University of Medical Sciences. In the last 24 hours, five more Covid-19 patients died, bringing the death toll in the province since the outbreak of coronavirus to 2,656 people. Dr. Fathi also reported that, as of January 27, 30,063 coronavirus patients have been hospitalized in Alborz and 27,146 patients have been discharged from hospitals.

In Qazvin, 76 more people with Covid-19 were hospitalized and three people with confirmed coronavirus cases died in the last 24 hours, announced Qazvin University of Medical Sciences. Currently, the total number of hospitalizations in the province is 174, of whom 19 are connected to ventilators. The official death toll in Qazvin since the start of the pandemic now stands at 1,268 and, as of now, 16,924 Covid-19 patients have been hospitalized. In the same 24 hours, 25 patients were discharged from hospitals.

Iran’s Latest Coronavirus Statistics

In her daily briefing for January 27, the health ministry’s spokeswoman Dr. Sima Sadat Lari announced the official coronavirus statistics for the last 24 hours:

This is part of IranWire's coronavirus chronology. Read the full chronology